Thursday, January 5, 2012

VCF Cap Replacement

Well, I got all my panel parts, but it looks like my panels for the rest of this first batch of modules won't be here until Tuesday at the soonest! Bummer... I was spoiled by having a coupon code for the 3-day service from Front Panel Express last time!

Anyhow, as I mentioned before I wasn't too happy with these ceramic capacitors (MLCCs) that I'd picked up. They seem to be working fine on the modules I've completed, but there's three .0022u caps on the VCF that are ceramic, but that could (potentially) benefit from better caps. So, I decided to replace them with polyester metallized film capacitors.

Those feel a lot nicer! I'm not a big fan of using my hand-held desoldering pump, but it does the job... honestly, it works fastest on single-sided boards, but on some of those it also has a tendency to lift the traces. At least it isn't something I have to use often! I'll continue using MLCCs for the decoupling and other non-critical caps, but I'll switch to a different make for future boards. (Not gonna swap out the other caps on my current boards, though!)

Well, there's not much I can do until those panels arrive, so I think I'll kick back with a glass of Racer 5 IPA tonight, and try (once again) to get my YuSynth Quadrature LFO working in my Dotcom system this weekend...